The English Colony.
We are still here, the English
slave owners enslaved at home,
led
through the market place
by the ring through our nose.
Some throw stones, some spit
others ape us, others make bids.
The
young open their guide books
while the old reminisce. Ah! The English !
Our name sticks in their throats,
relic of
Cornish fog & dressed stone
dank from a thousand years of rain.
Now old glory bubbles through our taste buds ,
green
hills dusted by Texan frosts, England
dressed by Betsy Ross & silent listening stations.
John.G.Hall©2003
On the Liberation of Iraq – Passover 2003
for Albert Nieman
Ali, the boy with no hands,
collateral damage
in a barrage from
hell,
wants to commit suicide
if Americans can’t replace
the hands they burned into oblivion.
In the birthplace of Abraham
in the Garden of Eden
where writing
began
where the first laws
were inscribed into stone
America has sacrificed
libraries and museums of antiquities
while
protecting the oil ministry
for its records of oil fields
and the Ministry of the Interior
where the secret police
dwelled
with their juicy information on every one.
The barbarians have invaded
and it is called liberation
killing
mercilessly
but never counting the bodies.
History recalls the Romans slaughtering
500,000 Carthaginians to dominate
trade
routes in the Mediterranean.
But the Pentagon won’t count
the dead and wounded in the Iraq carnage.
It might frighten the free people
of America and upset Arabs and Europeans.
It
might make some patriots
embarrassed, remorseful or shocked
by the horror of war – the burnt bodies
severed
limbs, and decapitations,
the children wounded and orphaned,
the mothers bereft of their children and husbands
even
the soldiers shoveled in heaps into mass graves.
Then there might be a call
beginning as a whisper and rising
to
a shout and then a prayer
for the end of war
for the healing of wounds
for truces and treaties
for nuclear
disarmament
for the beating of guns
into food and shelter and medicine.
Then we will awake
from the nightmare of history
and overthrow
the yolk of oil and empire.
But there I go again
dreaming of a new paradigm,
an alternative
universe
expecting miracles
like Moses and Aaron in Egypt
and Tom Paine in America
and Gandhi in India,
like
the creation itself
and the consciousness
that imagines these visions.
Next Year – in a new transfigured world.
Allen Cohen
April 18, 2003
Wanting Out
In the letter you mention going into the wilderness.
I forget to ask
where,
but wake in the night
to hear the lines so clearly.
The light just slipping through the curtain,
a
pale bird song grey,
the mattress is floating,
and I'm gripped by the fear of where you might be.
Is it safe, is
it sure?
It's hard to imagine
your clothes cut to fit your smallness,
the colours covering everything.
You
whisper over the sky,
my skin aches for you,
the taste of sunlight,
and I see you lying in the grass
watching
the river pass,
your eyes full of sadness and wonder.
You speak your own language,
and I try to build the meanings,
half glimpses of your secret places.
I make you trace them on a map,
but the names slip away from me now,
foreign
and strange,
flickering pictures on a wall.
Slivers of your laughter embedded in my footprints,
I walk over the
mystery of your disappearance.
Aoife Mannix(C)2004
don’t say this in my name
if I don’t say NO clearly, what will you say for me?
will it be
a forward order camouflaged in desert fatigues,
a shout, a ricochet from the red sands, or the sound of
retreat, the
murmur of reconciliation, the hush of peace?
what will you dare to say in my name, now that I have no voice?
and
if I do say NO clearly, will you take heed,
or will the dull thud of the nodding donkeys drown
me out as so much background
hiss?
REQUEST
(‘found poem’ – based on an actual phone call)
Have you a poem, anything
on Kosovo?
You know –
something to capture
the mood of the Nation?
Like Bosnia?
We want to air what
an artist has to say –
something bold, but short?
By Thursday?
Mario Petrucci(C)2003
X-File
“If you are touching, you are also being touched…”
–
Medbh McGuckian, The Colony Room.
In a Dublin restaurant,
Self-service, hot light,
A bald man like
any other
Said he fixed small countries.
He said this like you would
Say: I work in a garage –
That was
what he did,
In his grey raincoat he looked
Like a businessman
Caught between flights,
His accent polite Mid-West
Campus
American.
He was hungry, we both
Were: comparing the prices
Of café breakfasts here
And in Belfast, started it.
He
knew that city,
He mentioned a good hotel;
Balancing a full tray while
Holding a briefcase isn’t easy.
Do
you think we need
Fixing? I said. You’d know better
Than me, he answered,
Knifing up two squares of butter.
Fred Johnston(C)2003
No such republic
Socialism, like the buses, is running late.
Your days as an agent of
Goldstein finally over;
you’re no longer a danger to NATO expansion
or Alan Greenspan’s latest plan.
The
Secret Police leave you in peace.
And you always pictured an ice-pick
or a Czarist Prison at least;
something more
than simply
being crossed off the wanted list;
exiled to that country where resistance
is a thing of the past:
where,
when you tell them
where you’re from, neighbours snigger
and say, “But, Comrade,
no such Republic ever
existed!”
Kevin Higgins(C)2003
The Ballad of Cock Robin
Who killed Cock Robin?
I, said the Spinner,
Between lunchtime and
dinner,
I killed Cock Robin.
Who watched him die?
I, said the Spy,
With my one-sided eye,
I
watched him die.
Who caught his blood?
I, said the State,
With my greasy plate,
I
caught his blood.
Who’ll censor the obit?
I, said the Press,
It’s what
I do best,
I’ll censor the obit.
Who’ll sew the shroud?
I, said the People,
With my thread and
needle,
I’ll sew the shroud.
Who’ll dig his grave?
I, said the Soldier,
Through rock and
through boulder,
I’ll dig his grave.
Who’ll be the parson?
I, said the BBC,
With my hypocrisy
I’ve
got to be the parson.
Who’ll be the clerk?
I, said Lord Hutton,
Porkies, gammon,
or mutton,
I’ll be the clerk.
Who’ll carry the link?
I, said the Internet,
To everywhere
on the planet,
I’ll carry the link.
Who’ll be chief mourner?
I, said the President,
I’m darned
good at sentiment,
I’ll be chief mourner.
Who’ll carry the coffin?
We, said the City,
With our good works
committee,
We’ll carry the coffin.
Who’ll bear the pall?
We, said the Paparazzi,
The angle’s
fantastic,
So we’ll bear the pall.
Who’ll sing a psalm?
I, said the Poet,
After clearing his throat,
14
Poems for Lord Hutton
I’ll sing a psalm.
Who’ll toll the bell?
I, said Standard Oil,
Because I can toil,
So
Cock Robin, farewell.
All the clubs of St James’s
Went on gossiping and jobbing
When
they heard the bell toll
For poor Cock Robin.
Rip Bulkeley(C)2003
